


Although in the end you become the person you were

by Lavender_Seaglass



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn, and hopefully isn't as unpleasant, at least a burn that lasts longer than heartburn, default names, trying to explore some lore too, will tag more characters as appropriate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-17 15:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4672457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavender_Seaglass/pseuds/Lavender_Seaglass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loosely chronological vignettes imagining the minutiae of a relationship responding to a perpetually chaotic life.</p><p>..</p><p>( 3. Being a Circle Mage isn't the best life or even the worst, but it's the life she's been given. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An aberration of starlight

**S** he awakes with ashes in her mouth and moon in her eyes. How it is that physical things, real things, can be so brilliant across such a vast distance is something strikingly illogical just now. She wonders about it as she vomits nothing into her left palm. Removing her hand from her mouth, she puts some space between it and her head, rendering the appendage a subject of objective observation. She narrows her eyes, and the mark gives a suspiciously sapient flare. 

 

She would wonder, maybe fear, if she weren't aware that she must presently be wholly in the real world. The grasp of the Fade is waning. The flames that begot the physical sensations of ashes are scattering, flickering away into shadowy things less than notions. 

 

She's glad to be awake. It's better than being helpless to the prospect of a long, long nightmare. 

 

After a few more moments of peaceful rest--which may very likely be all that she will get this night--she rises out of bed with a woolen blanket draped around her. Underneath it she dresses in her armour, pulls on her boots, and contemplates bringing her staff. It's not like she needs it, strictly speaking at least, even if there were templars, but it is a thing of safety, and has very recently offered dependable aid in the face of a horde of demons. It also isn't the staff with which she departed from Ostwick; her old staff has parted ways with her, most likely as permanently as everything else she used to know. But this staff is still a staff, and it will still do, as any tall pole is helpful in three, four feet or so of snow and ice.

 

She also brings along the blanket. Her blanket. It's not as fine as anything she's ever had before, and she wouldn't trade it in for anything fancier because here, in this haven, function trumps frills, as she's especially aware now, pulling herself up and through a fresh snowbank along her way to somewhere not particularly specific. What she seeks can be seen from anywhere.

 

Looking only ahead presently, she doesn't consider the flaws she's smashed into the otherwise serene and smooth landscape behind her. These marks she's left on the earth are not important to her. What does concern her is the sky above, looming. Even now does the Breach distort the world from whatever perch or perspective she may see it from. The green tremors, the tendrils, a soft unwholesome roiling into shapes unformed, and the whispers of a pulse originate in centre of her left hand. 

 

She curls it into a fist and continues to gaze. The unknown can be a fascinating sight. An unexpected feeling can practically renew a life. A survival can be miraculous. But there are constellations hidden behind the Breach now. It is an aberration in starlight once familiar to the world, predictable and known, charted and accounted for, despite the cycle of civilisations and ages. What else it could come to disturb, she can't begin to imagine.

 

"Herald," she whispers, and wonders, did she, beyond reality, while fleeing a wave of fear manifest, meet with a woman so long dead? And a fated encounter, no less, though she herself has never done anything to court any fate, whether major or minor. The thing that has brushed up against her throughout her life, bearing its gifts of birth and magic and circumstance, isn't exactly luck either. At least not the kind she would think to court. 

 

"Herald?" It comes from behind her, not so much unfamiliar as weary and perhaps a little wary. He could be wondering if she's succumbed to some demon already. So she feels a habitual guilt for being over a line that technically is no longer drawn up in anything, not in law or in blood. She immediately hates this sensation. He's not bad but he brings such feelings with him. 

 

Still, she turns to face him. "Good evening, Commander."

 

"Are you..." His breathed hesitation lingers, just for a second, but it is there between them, visible to both as a fine silver smoke. "Are you well?"

 

"All is well. I just--I thought I would get a better look at the moons. What with the Breach, and how bright they are here in the south, it's quite a sight."

 

"So it is," he says. Then he's silent and he shuffles and stares at her and, as of yet, she doesn't know him well enough to understand what he may be trying to convey when he's encountered a shortage of words to build a bridge between them. The sympathy, the understanding, the signs that they are the same, the crawling under the skin and skull, shaking hands that should be sure, the shared experience of the primal plague of a cruelly unquiet mind, all of this and more, it's all there, between them as they are standing there, far away from home, in a land never thought to be seen again, illuminated by a weeping wound in the world. 

 

"It is quite a sight," he says. 

 

"So you'll be staying?"

 

"At least for a little while. If that's all right?"

 

She's intended to be alone this night and would rather ask him to go but, under the gravity of things much more oppressive she says, "Do as you will, Commander Cullen."

 

Side by side, they just stood there. 

...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> according to lore there are two moons though i am p. sure at this point it is most likely a conspiracy propagated by the tevene moon men


	2. But not too much

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evelyn gets in a few more puns while she can, and neither have much experience with animals, or at least much pleasant experience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jsyk there are slight spoilers for an operation in the for the jaws of hakkon dlc!

After she's done reading the report she still holds it in her hands. Her fingers tighten, and faint crinkles in the paper appear as she subtly stresses to restrain herself. She's aware that as soon as she puts the paper down she's going to see what she's already imagining.

 

That face of his that he makes, that slight little pout he never knows he's making when he tries to be stern and convey his disappointment. He really just doesn't get how cute it is. How could she ever resist? Presently she's trying hard, she really is, but in the end she's merely a human. Somehow he always manages to forgive her such an atavistic fault.

 

“I see that this whole trial has been a bit of 'bear-den' on you,” she says, as she puts the report on his desk. She's able to keep her eyes on it for a few seconds before having to look up.

 

He looks at her in the way that he does, and it just convinces her that every now and then he needs to have a little fun. “It's unbearable. I can't imagine how any honeyed words could fix this. We may have clawed our way to respect but I—”

 

“Evelyn,” he groans, and it's the most plaintive she has ever heard him.

 

So she approaches him. One hand out, reaching out for his wrist, making contact as he pulls away from her like she might be carrying the blight. He even looks away—to the side and out the window to a view that is objectively breathtaking—though it doesn't take long for them to ease into a familiar propinquity. As he draws back he draws her with him. Doesn't shake her off, either, so they both end up closer to the wall than the desk; which is just a small detail, as both surfaces are plenty sturdy.

 

“Yes, Commander?”

 

“Unless you plan on running the army anytime soon, please stop attempting to murder me.”

 

“Death by laughter?” She cocks her head. Her face is dead serious, without only a little quirk in her eyebrow, and he sees it coming already, her obvious next manoeuvre. If not the exact words then to be sure the form of it, because he really did just walk into it, what poor strategy and planning on his part. He's reaching a hand up to stop her but his efforts are in vain. “But it would be such a punny way to die!”

 

He wants to say something about his dignity, but he's already been defeated. Pride is something that needs at a few seconds to recover.

 

She's victorious as far she's concerned, and though he's on the losing side she wants him to be a part of the celebration: a sore loser isn't any fun. Laughing, probably just a bit too happy, maybe even with a bit of a gloating glow, she grabs the lining of his jacket and pulls herself up so that they see eye-to-eye. She leans on him, elevated now onto the tips of her toes. The precariousness of her balance at least tips the balance somewhat in his favour.

 

“I didn't mean to harm you, Commander. You're far too important and precious to risk. I wouldn't ever put you in any real danger.”

 

“Yes, well, your idea of fun, as I'm sure you think this is...” He trails off, his not-anger already tempered and dampened into something more smouldering. He places his hands on her waist, pulls her close, but doesn't quite touch his face to hers just yet. She'll have to work for that.

 

“Don't worry, Cassandra isn't a fan of my humour either. I guess I won't be quitting my other job. Being Inquisitor is just a little more important anyway, don't you think?” She laughs, once, in a space between breaths so it's somewhat airy. The little dip she makes with her head hides her expression and renders her, for a moment, more demure than she should be in such a situation.

 

So before she can retreat from the moment and _away_ from him and because he knows she wants it, aches to be with him even as she drifts away, he grasps her face and directs her gaze into his. Making such a gesture draws her right back to him and she responds quickly and pleasantly and her beatific smile is a blessing for them both. He strokes the hair at the nap of her neck.

 

As always, she kind of just _glows_.

 

“I know we can't keep her, but Storvacker reminds me how much I've always wanted a pet,” she says. “What about you?”

 

Gently, smiling, he shakes his head. “I've never really given it much thought. I suppose neither of us have really had much opportunity.”

 

“Well, one of the enchanters had this bird. Ugh. Just remembering it! It was a horrible spiteful little thing.” She shivers, seemingly for show, and places her head against his shoulder. “All of the mages in her fraternity loved it, but it would attack anyone who didn't practically bow to it. Can you imagine! It was better fed than most of us in the tower, I swear, it was so lavished with treats and choice scraps as far back as I can remember,” she finishes, with a tremble in her shoulders as though she truly were scared by just the memory of the thing. It's for his benefit, he thinks, but it's a good feeling it gives him, meant as a concession for sure. “I wouldn't be surprised if it were an abomination.”

 

“As a templar, I surely would have been duty-bound to protect you from such a horrible creature.”

 

“And now? I'm sure that blighted thing survived the rebellion. One day it will hunt me down, just you watch.”

 

He laughs, into her hair, and she pulls back to give him a look that's something like a pretty good mimic of the scowl—that warns of unwitting trespassing too close to a personal, embarrassing line—that he gives the scouts when they give him letters from Cole. “Will you need me to protect you, my lady, from the wrath of a vengeful bird?”

 

“You better believe it,” she says, and laughs, but for the span of a silent second she's almost serious. She tightens her grip on the fur in his collar with one hand, lets the other slip down to the crook of his elbow and there she burrows in against his side. He understands, then, that there's something here to be shared. “That day may one day come to pass.”

 

And then she laughs again, looks up at him, and pulls away with his arm ensnared in hers, giving him a tug towards the ladder that leads upwards to his quarters, or maybe towards the door that leads towards the main hall, urging him in any case towards somewhere that's more warm than the stone of the wall that radiates chill. Some light still remains in the sky, filtering through the paned glass and giving her hair a a silverish tint where the light of candles isn't gilding it, but it's evening now and the day's work done.

 

“Well, in any case, if we ever got a pet I would never want something so...” He trails off, once more, not really sure what to say as he could say a lot of things. There's a story, certainly, and he'd like to hear it, just as much he'd like to know about anything from her past. And he will ask. Probably later, when they are alone, nose to nose, wrapped in blankets, fitted tightly together. For now he touches her face again, with one hand frames and supports a side of her lovely face, and with one finger strokes away a wisp of hair he knows drives her crazy. “I would never stand for something so dangerous.”

 

“What about a dog?”

 

“Man's best friend. And, you know, I am a Fereldan.”

 

“I was thinking something like that,” she says, again coming up to meet him, and adds one more thing before kissing him. “It'd be a good match, the two of you. Simply too cute to resist. We'll just have to make sure she doesn't treat you like her puppy.”


	3. encirclement I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her early life wasn't cataclysmic but it wasn't exactly easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is definitely background-y and a bit of a character study and also one half of a pair. the other one will be a character study for templar!cullen.

Slithering sensations on her skin are ceaseless. She hides behind a rock, the one that she's seen a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, even more times somewhere along the road from the Chantry to the family's estate, a trip that she and her siblings dressed in their finery have always made at least three times a week for longer than she can properly remember.

 

The rock isn't big, it isn't quite a boulder, but it is bigger than her and it's grey and cold to the touch with a cruel chill that would make anyone think it has never seen the light of the sun. It is not of this world or any world that she should be traversing.

 

But it is hiding her from the eyes. Or at least some of them. She can run and run and still they will _find_  her because she doesn't know where she is going. She doesn't know where she is.

 

Or does she?

 

She could look to the sky and know the answer to this question but she doesn't want to. Chants sung by the faithful in the stone walls of the chantry echo through her and the sound vibrates all throughout her, mind and soul, but these familiar and comforting tones aren't _enough_. She can still feel the eyes and she can never hide from them, not this night or any night and it has been getting worse, worse, worse, they find her more quickly each time she passes beyond the barrier in this place, and here she is beyond the warmth and the light and the love of Andraste.

 

The rhythm of the songs have no sway over her like they do like when she hears them in the places where they should be sung. She tries to sing, tries to hum, but there is just silence she's never been as good as her older sisters who can each hold a tune so well that their prayers and praise are the finest the Maker has ever heard, her father says, her mother says, her aunt says. They could even convert the unbelievers, who do exist, though Evelyn has never met anyone who doesn't walk in the Maker's light, and who wouldn't want to walk in His light?

 

But now she can't make any noise and she doesn't have anyone to sing with her or for her, and anyway they keep looking at her, and they still see her even as she tries to hide.

 

Which is all fine, until something begins to move. Slithering sensations again on her skin, and it's a familiar feeling this time, the same feeling drops through her like when her father yells at her or anyone or at anything, even the servants whose names she doesn't know, it prickles in her chest and stoppers up her breathing like she has a whole lightless star in her throat. She tries to scream but there's no-one to hear her.

 

And then _it touches her._

 

...

 

The child didn't realise she was awake until long after she had run out of the house. She was without proper shoes. The cold ground stung her soft feet through the silk of her slippers, and she didn't know exactly where she was going. She just needed to get away from the thing chasing her.

 

Running into the edge of her father's hunting grounds, she thought in bright bursts of frantic memory of the rock she had been dreaming about. But if it had not protected her there, in the Fade, she did not know how it could protect her here. It may be solid here, just as it was supposed to be in reality, but the thing that was pursuing her wouldn't be stopped by a mere solid object.

 

She turned around and saw that it was still following her; it had even gone through the walls.

 

She ran. She scampered up a game trail, crawled through bramble, hopped over great gnarled roots, and tumbled down into a ditch and tried not to cry out as pain flared along her side. She tried to get up but she couldn't support herself, and then there was no point trying to escape, because the thing caught up to her.

 

And it hovered there. Watching her, perhaps waiting for something. A moment of weakness, that had to be what it was watching _and_ waiting for, she thought as she rolled onto her side and kept her eyes on the thing.

 

“Leave me be, demon,” she hissed. She tried to convey as best she could that she was under the protection of the blessed Andraste. “I want nothing to do with you! I know all about you!”

 

But it just hovered there. Maybe it moved a little, but only a very tiny amount, it just floated and continued to produce a consistent amount of soft phosphorescence that wasn't enough to illuminate anything, but was enough to reveal to her where it was.

 

It was green or white, maybe even a whitish green. Green wasn't her favourite colour, so if it was trying to entice her that way, it was making a mistake. She told it as much, addressing it once again as demon, in a tone she tried to model after the fiercest Sister she could think of.

 

The thing made no sudden or even interesting movements.

 

It continued to be there.

 

And she kept watching it, waiting, increasingly scared and tense and confused. Time passed quietly until the point where she finally had had enough. Wailing, she rolled over again and tried to get up and fell right back over. This time dirt and other things she couldn't discern in the darkness clung to her face as grit in lines marked out by her tears and snot. She tried to crawl away, but her foot didn't feel right even with this sparing use and punished her attempts at movement with a flare of pain that almost washed out the light from the _thing_ for some moments.

 

She closed her eyes.

 

When she opened them again the thing had moved closer to her, in fact very close to her, and she could feel—something. Warmth chiming on her skin, a loosing in her body, and she realised just then that she was cold. Autumn was already on its way, there were hardly any leaves in the trees, they were on the ground and in her hair.

 

“What do you want from me?” she asked the thing, and she was tired and ready to cry again.

 

Where before the thing hadn't shown any sign of response, it now pulsed. The girl, at least for a moment, thought that she could feel the pulsing within herself, as something of an unsung song, euphonious without being heard, it was a nice rhythm, but all she really felt was a little less cold and a burdening exhaustion heavier than she could bear.

 

Other things then appeared. They were the same colour, a little smaller, but they moved in the same way and came close to her and kept her company. Eventually she curled up on the ground and watched the orbs of light flit about. She wasn't sure if they were dancing. Their movements were engaging, however, a little unpredictable but not too much so as to be scary.

 

And, as she would understand later, when some years had passed and she had dwelt in a place that allowed her a proper vantage point from which to look back on this memory, and see it for what it truly was—an encounter, curiosity, innocence, well-wishing—the things distracted her from her miserable state until their gentle light was blasted away by one much brighter.

 

She cried out and had to shield her eyes from the illumination thrown off by the fire inside a lantern carried by someone. She couldn't see who it was, whoever was behind the light was just a silhouette, like a bleary corona, that was harsh on her watering eyes. But she didn't need to see who it was, she heard the voice of her apologising nurse and then the swearing of her father.

 

She didn't smile, and she didn't feel rescued. She knew that she was in trouble. And she felt that that none of it was her fault, even as she was dragged to her feet by her nurse, even as she was hefted up like a sack because presumably the adults realised she couldn't stand on her own.

 

She hadn't chosen to see the spirits. She just _did_.

 

.

 

Though she still knew what it meant and what had to pass.

 

She expected that there would be a procession of brilliant scarlet banners to come, a whole parade virtually, to escort her away from her family forever. She had seen it happen once. Their carriage had been stalled while it took a whole score of templars to take a peasant boy away. So she was sure that they would need more than a score to take her away, surely so many more than that, because her family was much grander than some random family who lived along a road on the outskirts of a village.

 

She also thought that she would have a few days to prepare. It was another thing she was wrong about.

 

The very next morning—and she did not actually sleep when she was given a few hours to rest—a single pair of templars arrived, and they got into the back of the cart she was loaded onto. They were at a back part of the house, a part she had never been to, where the family's supplies and servants arrived to in the morning and departed from in the evening. The sun hadn't yet risen high enough to light up the stones of the house to the warm cream colour that they should be; her last image of her home wouldn't be one she was familiar with.

 

She was loaded into the cart between two covered crates by a servant who wasn't her nurse. She thought she recognised him, though, or at least his hands, she had seen them doing work somewhere on the estate. They were rough to touch even through the layers of her clothes and cloak but the intent behind them felt more gentle towards her than the look her father was giving her. Her mother wasn't there, and she hadn't been there last night. She probably was in fact still asleep without having been woken. When she did wake up she would just agree with Evelyn's father, like she always did, that he had made the right decisions regarding the handling of their eight year old daughter.

  
He at least addressed something to her before the templars got in and sat on either side of her. He leant in over the side railing of the cart, looked her right in the eyes, getting closer to her than he had been in some time, and he said to her, “Behave yourself. You may not be my daughter any longer but you are still a daughter of the Maker, and He will always see you. Do you understand?”

 

She nodded. Then she looked up to the pre-dawn sky because the Maker was there, somewhere, watching her even now. There were clouds up there but they couldn't cloud His vision, not when He could see right through the Veil even with His back turned away.

 

On the ride to the Circle the wagon jostled on the road and it hurt her ankle and made the templars rattle like broken toys. Though, when they reached their destination, the one who lifted her up and out smiled at her and told her that she was a brave girl for not crying.

 

…

 

Years passed, and the spirits still visited her, and she liked these visits. The spirits could be little wisps of light to light her path in dark and unsure places. The spirits could be good companions when her fellow apprentices were being prats, such as the times when they harassed her to confirm whether or not her phylactery was in fact blue and not the regular red, or when the Dalish boy she had tried to help called her shemlen right to her face.

 

They weren't welcome in the Circle but, just because she lived there, she didn't have to announce all of her guests. And why should she, when some of them didn't even have names?

 

.

 

She wondered about asking one of the spirits to help her guide her hand when re-opening the holes in her ears, but she didn't. She didn't have any earrings to wear anyway. No-one had ever got around to sending her personal effects after her.

 

…

 

She wasn't alone in the Circle. No-one ever was. Even when the spirits and the other mages weren't there, the templars were. They watched. They saw. They gave her sensations like she found in the Fade, when the eyes of things unseen followed her through the nightly progress of her dreams.

 

The templars didn't speak much, but it wasn't all bad. Some of them didn't want anything from her. Some of them did, but those templars wanted something not just of her but of all mages, and that was to be dead. Whether it was fear or just not wanting to be on duty just then—curse these damned robes for their burden upon us all, these blighters are a scourge upon decent folk, and so on—it wasn't hard to see when a templar didn't like her and was better off avoided or placated. She could ignore them or just treat them as though they were another piece of furniture, and that wasn't so bad.

 

The best not-so-bad part was one templar who looked at her like a spirit might: with curiosity. He might not have talked much, even less than other reticent and righteous templars, but he watched, and he saw not just her magic, he saw _her_. One day he even smiled at her, and that was the first time a templar had smiled at her since she arrived at the Circle. In the days since the only ones who did were the enchanters she impressed and the apprentices whom she could call friends.

 

It felt good, feeling genuinely liked.

 

The templars were always there. They pressed down upon the mages in this place, like the spirits did upon the Veil here, as the apprentices learnt. The apprentices were also taught that both templars and spirits were dangerous—inherently and if tempted—but Evelyn was content to know that at least they could be pleasant company.

 

Her friends didn't agree with her. They also weren't quite like her, she knew that and they always reminded her of that, disgraced nobility that she was. But denied privilege wasn't what really made the differences truly felt. They couldn't feel spirits like she could, nor could they feel the ways in which the templar was kind to her.

 

In fact they feared spirits and the templars, they feared encirclement, and _that_ was strange to her. Fear—at least fear of this—wasn't something she felt, not until it was much too late to make a difference.

 

Because that kind templar wasn't kind to just her. He was kind to all mages, and then he was killed by an abomination none had seen coming. He hadn't even been the designated slayer.

 

The templars knew about her relations with spirits, because you can't really hide the things that make you happy, so they watched her more closely. They watched, and they waited, encircling her for everyone's protection, ready to strike now, just in case, where the risk was greatest, every second, every minute, every hour, every day.

 

.

 

Lydia, who recognised her gifts with spirits, who was very observant, told Evelyn that it was better this way.

 

“I really have to tell you this. At least now there's no danger of you corrupting a templar from his sacred duty. You need to focus on you, if you're going to survive. Do you even know who you are?”

 

Evelyn was eighteen, an apprentice, and her Harrowing wasn't so very far away.  


End file.
